Fresh off the wires, automatically added to this album.

Gallery View:Latest Cricket Photos

YouTube/BeyondMeat Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown Not every startup in Silicon Valley is focused on social networking or enterprise collaboration. On Tuesday at the Launch Festival in San Francisco, several companies stood in front of an audience full of tech enthusiasts and declared that the future of food had arrived. Then, to prove it, they fed their food to some test subjects. Bitty Foods founder Megan Miller is betting big on insects. The ... more

YouTube/BeyondMeat Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown Not every startup in Silicon Valley is focused on social networking or enterprise collaboration. On Tuesday at the Launch Festival in San Francisco, several companies stood in front of an audience full of tech enthusiasts and declared that the future of food had arrived. Then, to prove it, they fed their food to some test subjects. Bitty Foods founder Megan Miller is betting big on insects. The company uses crickets to make cricket flour, which it uses for multiple types of food. Crickets are not only a great source of protein — they are also highly sustainable and eating them will help “cut out 18% of carbon emissions,” Miller said on stage. If this 2013 study by the United Nations is any indication, people should prepare themselves for the coming food invasion. But still, they’re bugs. On stage, moderator Jason Calacanis ended up trying a cricket, and remarked that it tasted like a “salty cracker.” He then brought a small girl up to the stage and gave her a cookie made of cricket flour. The girl didn’t say anything and kept on eating, which apparently meant she liked it. Unfortunately, the audience was not able to try any cricket food — or perhaps that was a relief to many. Another startup, Beyond Meat, engineers meat scientifically. They “add in all the best things about meat…and avoid the bad things.” How do they do this? Founder Ethan Brown — a lifelong vegan — states on the company’s website that they “take plant-based less